saline water demonstration program, was never reported out of the Commerce Committee, dying there as other bills had died. On January 6, 1965, I introduced S. 23 which also was referred to the Commerce Committee and was never reported out. My new bill (S. 2875) introduced February 4, 1966, authorizes and directs the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a comprehensive program of scientific and engineering research, experiments and tests and operations for increasing the yield of water from atmospheric sources. This legislation, carrying a $155 million authorization for the next 3 years, has the support of 20 other Senators and has been referred this time to the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. The bill, and the program it would authorize, is based on the finest scientific and administrative advice anyone could obtain. It implements the recommendations of two outstanding panels of scientists, one set up by the National Science Foundation and the other by the National Academy of Sciences. They found that weather modification efforts do get results and recommended that the Federal effort be expended sixfold by 1970, from around $5 million a year to $30 million annually. Additionally, both panels recommended a like increase in atmospheric studies backing up the weather modification work. When the two panel reports came out in January, I obtained the help of another group of specialists, including men like Vincent Schaefer, the weather modification pioneer, and Dr. Julian Bigelow, the great mathematician at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University, to develop a specific program, list the facilities, the equipment, and the personnel that it would require and estimate costs for 10 years. I then had their program embodied in an authorization bill, now S. 2875, on which this hearing is being held. We have already had 3 days of hearings in Washington. Scientists: from six States testified Monday at Rapid City, S. Dak. This is the last scheduled hearing here today. When the record is completed, the verbatim proceedings of all 5 days of hearings will be assembled and printed. Copies will be sent to all witnesses and anyone else who requests a copy. Testifying here today are scientists from several Southwestern States who rank high among the experts in the field. I have taken a little time to go into this background so participants, as well as those who are here to observe, can have some understanding of the occasion, of the long and rather persistent effort that has brought us here, and of the importance of the subject. Scientists have told us that they have identified a few situations in the atmosphere where a modest amount of energy may change the nature or course of atmospheric movements that involve enormous volumes of energy, comparable to a single match starting a great forest fire. Here in New Mexico, where we are developing the last of our available water resources, it is easy to appreciate the enormous benefit that ability to modify the climate could bring to us. It could be the basis for economic development and growth far beyond the present limitations imposed on us by limited water supplies. Weather modification may very easily become a scientific undertaking comparable in importance and size to our atomic and space efforts. It will have a much more direct effect on the lives of ordinary citizens. As a member of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and chairman of the Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, I have had a ringside seat at both of those developments. I can tell you that I regard the advancement of this scientific effort, in relation to the atmosphere, of fully equal importance and well worth equal support by our Government. I have here a letter from Dr. Neyman, professor and director of the Statistical Laboratory at the University of California in which he outlines the need for a statistical weather modification facility. It's a pretty good letter and without objection I will put his letter and his outline of facilities into the record at this point. (The letter referred to follows:) UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, Hon. CLINTON P. ANDERSON, April 6, 1966. DEAR SENATOR ANDERSON: This is in connection with the bill, S. 2875, you introduced providing for a comprehensive program of scientific and engineering research on artificial stimulation of precipitation. I am confident that your bill will become law and that it will result in much fruitful experimentation on this very important problem. The purpose of the present letter is to suggest the necessity of certain steps to insure that the results of the proposed experimentation are not lost but are preserved for use of all qualified scientists concerned with the problem. As of now, the data collected in the course of certain completed experiments, financed from public funds, appear irretrievably lost. Yet these data contain precious information, the availability of which could speed up the solution of the problem of weather control. This is the information on questions which were not asked at the time the experiment was performed but which, with the progress in our knowledge, became very relevant. When data on old experiments is lost, in order to answer these new questions new experiments must be performed at the cost of perhaps millions of dollars and, even more importantly, at the cost of another period of 5 years or so. Considerations of this kind suggest that, in parallel with the broad program of experimentation visualized in your bill, a special unit be set up, perhaps to be called statistical weather modification facility, with the following two related purposes. (1) To preserve in usable form the data on completed weather modification experiments, and (2) To conduct statistical research with the use of collected data on already completed weather modification experiments. Enclosure A outlines the functioning of the proposed facility. Enclosure B indicates some arguments in favor of the facility. Yours respectfully, J. NEYMAN, Professor and Director of the Statistical Laboratory. [Enclosure A] OUTLINE OF FUNCTIONS OF THE PROPOSED STATISTICAL WEATHER MODIFICATION FACILITY (SWMF) (1) DATA COLLECTION AND STORAGE The SWMF would collect, sort, organize, and store, on punchcards, magnetic tapes, or on microfilms, relevant data relating to all publicly funded weather modification experiments conducted in the United States and also relating to such other weather modification experiments in the United States and abroad that may be judged sufficiently significant and that the collection of data on them will be found feasible. The data in question would be not only those that the experimenters concerned would collect on their own initiative, data intended to answer questions formulated by these experimenters, but also collateral data, the relevance of which may be only suspected, but which later on may become invaluable as a source of information on questions that may be asked in the future. The success in this respect will depend very much on the scientific initiative, alertness, and foresight of the directing body of the SWMF. (2) LEGAL BASIS The basis for the activity of SWMF must be a law requiring (a) that the facility be informed of each incipient publicly funded weather modification experiment, including the design of the experiment, its purpose, and the data collection program; (b) that photocopies of the original data on every such experiment be routinely made available to the facility as they are collected, perhaps within 3 months of each completed experimental season. (3) COLLATERAL DATA The SWMF would be authorized to seek cooperation of the appropriate Federal and State agencies in collection of the relevant collateral data, such as photocopies of radiosonde data, precipitation records in areas adjoining the weather modification experiments, etc. (4) USE OF DATA The purpose of data collected and organized by the SWMF would be to create the possibility of using the weather modification experiments already completed in order to answer questions which were not formulated at the time when these experiments were planned and executed. For this purpose, and subject to the restriction explained in (5) the data collected by the SWMF would be available, at cost, to all agencies of the United States and to all authorized individuals and research institutions. (5) PRIORITY RIGHTS OF THE EXPERIMENTERS The availability of data on completed experiments would be subject to the restriction designed to protect the priority rights of the experimenters: the latter must be allowed a reasonable time, perhaps a year, to analyze and to evaluate their experiments themselves. Thereafter the results of the experiments would become public property. (6) OWN RESEARCH OF THE SWMF In addition to collecting, organizing, and preserving data on completed weather modification experiments, the SWMF would conduct its own research in the following domains: (a) Theoretical research aiming at the development of particularly efficient statistical techniques for the evaluation of weather modification experiments. (b) Development of experimental designs with which significant results on weather modification might be obtained through a shorter period of experimentation, and therefore, at a savings expected to be substantial. (c) Evaluation and reevaluation of selected experiments already performed. (7) CONSULTING SERVICE The SWMF would provide statistical consulting service to all research workers and institutions who may request it, particularly with reference to evaluation techniques and to planning of new experiments. (8) GOVERNING BODY The SWMF would function under policy decisions of a governing body composed of representatives of research institutions concerned with weather modification problems, to be determined by a separate regulation. (9) AUTONOMY The SWMF must have a degree of autonomy and be free to collect and, when the occasion arises, to publish data and evaluations at its own discretion. In particular, SWMF should be financially independent of the institutions engaged in actual experimentation with weather control. This would insure impartiality in the analysis performed by a group which would have no vested interests in the results. Perhaps the best way to achieve this autonomy is to locate the SWMF within the academic community rather than to have it attached to a governmental agency. [Enclosure B] MOTIVATION FOR THE PROPOSAL TO CREATE THE STATISTICAL WEATHER MODIFICATION FACILITY (1) USEFULNESS OF "COLLATERAL DATA" ON WEATHER MODIFICATION The usefulness of collateral data on weather modification experiments may be dramatically illustrated by the following fact: As revealed at the recent meeting "Weather Modification Section of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium" (see attached program), the first and, thus far, the only unambiguous evidence that cloud seeding with silver iodide can increase precipitation came from the hailprevention experiment, so-called Grossversuch III, performed in Switzerland from 1957 to 1963. Here, then, precipitation amounts were "collateral" to the purpose of the experiment and it is pure luck that they were published in the annual reports. The significance of the precipitation data was largely overlooked. Thus, for example, the 1964 preliminary report of the NAS Panel dismisses the Swiss experiment in one sentence to the effect that no significant effect of seeding on hail incidence was found. (In actual fact, a more detailed analysis revealed that seeding increased the incidence of hail.) (2) A SPECIAL AGENCY TO ASSEMBLE AND TO PRESERVE DATA ON COMPLETED EXPERIMENTS IS NEEDED Here, again, Grossversuch III is bound to be considered as an intrusion and be resented. A special agency, established on the principle that the results of an experiment performed from public funds are public property, an agency established for the specific purpose of preserving this property, would be treated differently. (3) NEED FOR THEORETICAL RESEARCH IN STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY AND THE DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTS Experiments in physics and chemistry are as old as these sciences. They were going on without special theory and with great success, because in the laboratories it was possible to isolate the factors studied and to eliminate extraneous sources of variation. This was not and is not the case in the domains where great variability is an inherent feature of the subjects of study. Cases in point are agricultural, medical, and, more generally, biological studies. Here the variability from one plot of land to the next, from one patient or from one rat to another is so large as to hide the effects of treatments studied. In these domains, scientific experimentation was born in the 1920's and 1930's with the foundation, by R. A. Fisher, of special discipline: theory of experimentation. Through the work of Fisher and of his numerous followers, the theory of experimentation spread over many domains of science. However, thus far very little has been done with reference to weather modification experiments where there are special specific difficulties. In parallel with the extension of the theory of experimental design, there are other statistical theoretical problems to be solved. Such work as has been done already indicates that merely by a change of a statistical technique and/or by a modification of the experimental design, the time of experimentation necessary for detecting a significant effect of cloud-seeding may be shortened by a factor of two or more. Research of this kind requires special qualifications, those of a mathematical statistician. However, it cannot be conducted in the abstract, but requires contacts with live experimental and observational data. The creation of the proposed Statistical Weather Modification Facility would provide an appropriate ground for such contacts. Senator ANDERSON. We are very happy to have here today Senator Alan Bible, a longtime advocate of the causes of the West, and Senator Jordan of Idaho, whom I've found to be one of the most knowledgeable men on the committee. He represents the minority. I would like Senator Bible to make a statement for the record. Senator BIBLE. Mr. Chairman, as I have on so many occasions during my years in the U.S. Senate, I want to congratulate you on the leadership that you provided in initiating hearings on S. 2875. My interest in this program goes back, not quite as long as yours, but it does go back to 1957. As a member of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, I chaired hearings on a bill at that time for experimental research in cloud modification. Again in 1959 I cosponsored legislation designed to improve our knowledge in this very, very interesting field. In view of the lack of urgency which was indicated by the National Science Foundation, I proposed, in 1964, that the Bureau of Reclamation appropriation be increased from $100,000 to $1,100,000 to implement a full-scale campaign to increase precipitation on the Colorado River. Data supplied by the Bureau of Reclamation indicate the benefits of increased rainfall through weather modification could be tremendous. An additional inch of precipitation in the Colorado River Basin above Glen Canyon Dam would produce a runoff of 575,000 acre-feet. This extra amount of flow through Federal powerplants could boost income, at established power rates, by $2.5 million. Naturally, this additional water could be available for agricultural, municipal, and industrial uses. Allowing for losses in runoff, this added inch of precipitation would still provide 500,000 acre-feet of water for irrigation which, based on a 1962 water-crop benefit formula, would produce a gross crop income of $24.7 million. Municipal and industrial uses, of course, would increase the value of this extra precipitation even more. These funds were utilized by the Bureau both as grants to universities, including the Desert Research Institute, and for a field program in the basin. Because of the effectiveness of the Bureau's program, the Appropriations Committee approved funding of this program for the present or current fiscal year in the sum of $2,980,000. This is but a step in the right direction. The legislation now before you, Mr. Chairman, would prove whether or not weather control is presently within the grasp of our scientists. As you, yourself, have well said, and I quote you from your statement made in the hearings in Washington, D.C., on March 21 : It is readily apparent that it is vital to the public interest to reassess the position of weather modification research with a view toward paralleling Government-supported basic research with more extensive field applications. Again, my congratulations to you, Mr. Chairman, in your initiative in introducing this legislation. In calling the hearings, you have again, as is so often the case, my pledge of complete cooperation in securing enactment of the present bill. Senator ANDERSON. Thank you very much. Senator JORDAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just want to join Senator Bible in paying tribute to you in your leadership in this area. I am pleased, indeed, to be a cosponsor |